Today I want to talk about career choices for fresh graduates, primarily focused on backend development (the topic of role selection is also quite broad, and I may write a separate article about it if I get the chance). Over the past few years, I’ve worked in state-owned enterprises, large companies, and small companies, so I feel I have some real perspective on what different companies are like.

Career choice ultimately comes down to two key decisions: city and company. Choosing a city is highly subjective. For example, as someone from the north, I don’t like the climate in southern cities, I want to be close to home, and I need the opportunities that a big city offers — so Beijing was almost the only option. As practical advice, I’d suggest considering fast-growing strong second-tier cities like Chongqing or Hefei, where you can ride the wave of urban development and increase your own value along the way.

Within the scope of Beijing, I’ll discuss company choices based on my own experience.

When it comes to Beijing, one topic that inevitably comes up is the hukou (household registration). However, I strongly advise against letting a hukou decision dictate your entire life trajectory — for instance, joining a state-owned enterprise just for a hukou even though you have no desire to work in the system. Always prioritize thinking through your career development direction before worrying about hukou.

Many people agonize over public sector vs. private sector, big company vs. small company — but these are all surface-level choices. Even within the public sector, experiences can vary enormously. The right approach is to first clarify what you truly want, then seek out suitable opportunities. Knowing what you truly want isn’t easy for everyone, so let me break it down. Consider these questions:

  • What do you most want from work? Money? Power? A sense of inner achievement? Or do you not expect anything from work at all?
  • How much of your life do you want work to occupy?
  • Among the resources gained through work (connections, information, etc.) and the capabilities developed, which do you feel more confident carrying into a different environment?
  • Do you prefer doing routine, administrative work, or do you want to continuously tackle challenging problems?

For any of these questions, no answer is inherently better than another. Tackling difficult problems isn’t superior to doing routine work — it’s simply a choice based on personal values.

With any combination of these choices, you can find suitable opportunities. For instance, if you don’t expect much from work, don’t want it to dominate your life, and are willing to do routine work, some peripheral state-owned institutions could be a good fit. If you want power, are willing to let work take up significant time, and prefer to accumulate resources through work, consider core state-owned institutions with real authority. And if you want to earn money and prefer to develop personal capabilities, being a programmer is a solid choice.

Once you’ve thought through these questions, you can choose a company. Many times, we may not find a place that satisfies all our requirements. That’s okay — we can use job-hopping to address one part at a time, continuously gather information and improve our abilities, and find opportunities when we’re ready to seize them.

Let me share how I approached my own key decisions based on my experience.

When I first graduated, my goal was to get a Beijing hukou while staying in the internet industry. I had two broad directions: competing for an SSP offer at an internet company — but my abilities at the time weren’t sufficient, so that path was hard to take. The other path was to find opportunities within state-owned enterprises where the business closely resembled internet scenarios, ideally consumer-facing products with large user bases and data volumes, so I wouldn’t fall too far behind industry-leading technologies. Fortunately, I found such an opportunity and successfully seized it. After joining, it was pretty much as I expected — although the company’s technical level wasn’t high and the corporate culture had many issues, the business scenarios were excellent and I had plenty of room to contribute. Through my work, I learned a great deal.

Next, I needed to address my big tech experience, so when I changed jobs, I only considered top-tier tech companies. The work itself was nothing special to speak of — although I wasn’t happy during that period, I achieved the goals I’d set, so there are no regrets.

For my next job change, I had three goals: significantly increase my income to close the gap with peers caused by my time at the state-owned enterprise; not work too much overtime; and have more relaxed interpersonal relationships. These three goals seem contradictory, don’t they? But with effort, I always managed to find suitable opportunities, and that’s how I ended up at my current company. Not all problems were solved perfectly, but they were addressed enough to make my work experience quite enjoyable.

Through my own experience, you can see that I always seemed to make contradictory demands — wanting both fish and bear paw — and fortunately, I managed to get both in the end. The truth is, there are so many companies in the world that no two conditions are necessarily mutually contradictory. There’s no need to give things up prematurely. For example, does being a programmer necessarily mean 996 work and giving up your life? Obviously not.

I’d like to address two more specific questions that arise from the above.

First, whether to choose a Beijing hukou. Let me first say what I gained from it. I caught the wave of property price surges in 2015-2016, which significantly increased my family’s assets even though I had no financial planning awareness at the time. This no longer holds true today — under the policy of housing for living, not speculation, even Beijing properties can’t outperform the stock market. Second, some procedures became slightly more convenient to handle, which I consider negligible — I probably don’t deal with paperwork more than once a year, and an increasing number of procedures support remote processing. Third, I can rest assured about my children’s education in Beijing without worrying about future uncertainty. I say “uncertainty” because I think it’s highly uncertain whether non-Beijing hukou holders will still be barred from taking the gaokao in Beijing nearly twenty years from now, and equally uncertain how competitive Beijing’s gaokao will become. A Beijing hukou essentially fixes my future choices, but what those choices will actually amount to is hard to predict.

So currently, the value of a Beijing hukou is quite limited. If I could go back to 2015, I’d still choose a Beijing hukou without hesitation. But if I had to make this choice today in 2021, I’d most likely decline it.

Second, regarding big tech experience. My view is that you must have it, and the sooner the better, but there’s no need to stay at a big company for life. The value of big tech experience has been thoroughly discussed by many, so I won’t repeat it here. Feel free to reach out if you’re interested in discussing further.

The above covers most of this article. One point I haven’t mentioned is the midlife crisis — some might wonder why. The reason is that I don’t think it’s a problem that can be solved through career choices alone. Some people think the public sector is stable — even if you coast every day, no one can touch you. But I don’t consider stability that depends on external conditions to be true stability. The public sector has had problems before in history. This path might give you a 99.99% chance of living peacefully for life, but if that 0.01% scenario occurs, what will you do? Being a programmer is different — perhaps only a 50% chance of staying comfortably at one company, but the capabilities developed through work give me the confidence to handle the other 50%. The only way to address the midlife crisis is self-improvement — whether building capabilities or accumulating resources, you must gain something from work to maintain your competitiveness.

I’m Liusha. You can connect with me through the WeChat public account (Mobility), my personal website, and other channels.

Source: https://lichuanyang.top/en/posts/34931/